The celebrated life of a colourful swindler and impostor, first published in 1745 and reprinted numerous times.more...

This is one of two editions printed for Buckland, Bathurst and Davies in 1793. The final 5 pages contain a notable cant dictionary.

Carew fell in with a band of gypsies as a wayward young boy. “After a year and a half Carew returned home for a time, but soon after resumed a career of swindling and imposture, which saw him deceive people to whom he had previously been well known. Eventually he embarked for Newfoundland, but stayed only a short time. On his return to England he passed as the mate of a vessel, and eloped with the daughter of a respectable apothecary from Newcastle upon Tyne, whom he later married.

Carew soon returned to the nomadic life, and when Clause Patch, a Gypsy king or chief, died Carew was elected his successor. He was convicted of being an idle vagrant, and sentenced to be transported to Maryland. On his arrival he attempted to escape, but was captured and made to wear a heavy iron collar; he escaped again, and encountered some Native Americans, who removed his shackles. On departure he travelled to Pennsylvania. He was then said to have swum the Delaware River, after which he adopted the guise of a Quaker, and made his way to Philadelphia, then to New York, and finally to Boston, where he embarked for England. He escaped impressment on board a man-of-war by pricking his hands and face, and rubbing in bay salt and gunpowder, so as to simulate smallpox” (John Ashton, rev. Heather Shore in Oxford DNB).

This biography is variously attributed to Bampfylde Moore Carew himself, to Robert Goadby and also to his wife, Mrs. Goadby. .see full details

An idiosyncratic personal index of useful and curious facts, mainly geographical, in part forming an index to the Encyclopédie Méthodique (which had been issued in print without an index), a gazetteer to its Atlas, and an index to various other books, such as Valmont de Bomare’s Histoire Naturelle and Lacroix’s Géographie.more...

A homespun affair, the volume is rather haphazardly arranged and presented in homemade boards covered in rather fine contemporary wallpaper. It includes references to regions, cities and landmarks in Europe, Asia, Africa and America (the latter including mentions of Cabot, Columbus and Penn) and several ingenious diagrams of the rivers of France..see full details

The Way to Wealth first appeared in French as a separate publication in 1775. The original English text was first published in Poor Richard’s Almanac for 1758; separately issued in 1760 under the title: Father Abraham’s Speech and frequently reprinted under the title: The Way to Wealth. La Science du bonhomme Richard was translated by A.F. Quétant; the Interrogatoire de Mr. Franklin by P.S. Dupont de Nemours and the Interrogatoire de M. Penn by A.F. Quétant and J.B. L’Écuy..see full details

George Woodward, affectionately dubbed ‘Mustard George’ by his contemporaries, was one of the pioneers of English caricature.more...

Like his drinking-partner Thomas Rowlandson, Woodward absorbed high and low culture omnivorously and paid keen attention to contemporary politics.

A Political Fair is ‘a fantastic survey of the international situation’ in 1807 and is considered one of Woodward’s finest images, the print catalogue of the British Museum devoting two full pages to its complex allegories. At the heart of the fair is a large booth (‘The Best-Booth in the Fair’) representing Great Britain holding aloft on its platform images of Britannia, John Bull, together with an Irishman, Scotsman and Welsh harpist gathered convivially around a punchbowl, while a waiter sweeps into the chamber below with a vast joint of roast beef on his platter. All this was typical of Woodward’s patriotism and was intended to portray the essential unity of the nation amidst the host of clamouring figures in the neighbouring booths representing the other nations. Napoleon, in tricorn and feathers, rebuffs a disgruntled Dutchman complaining about his King with the words ‘I never change Mynheer after the goods are taken out of the Shop’. High up on the right, the American booth displays a placard advertising ‘Much ado about Nothing with the Deserter’, a reference to the friction between Britain and the United States over recent defections from British to American ships and the ban on armed British ships in American ports. The Danish booth on the left advertises ‘The English Fleet and The Devil to Pay’ in reference to the hideous bombardment of Copenhagen by the British fleet in September that year.

Musical and theatrical references abound, with many of the placards punning on the titles of plays and musical performances then showing in London: Much ado about nothing, All’s well that ends well (Shakespeare), The Padlock (Bickerstaffe), The Deserter (Dibdin), The Double Dealer (on the Russian booth, by Congreve) and The English Fleet (Dibdin again)..see full details

First edition of a rather reactionary consideration of Paine’s republicanism which includes notice of the earlier critique by John Quincy Adams.more...

A second edition appeared later in the same year. Hardy was a Scottish cleric, not to be confused with the radical Thomas Hardy, founder of the London Corresponding Society. Their positions cannot have been much farther apart..see full details

FIRST EDITION of the scarce licensed report of the celebrated case of the execution of the Fourth Earl Ferrers, Viscount Tamworth, said to have been the "first sufferer by the new drop just then introduced in the place of the barbarous cart, ladder, and mediaeval three-cornered gibbet" (DNB citing All the Year Round and Walpole's Letters).more...

Ferrers had been found guilty of the murder of a household steward whom he had shot at his house at Staunton Harrold, Leicestershire, apparently as a result of a long-held grudge. His execution at Tyburn was a remarkable public spectacle as this report attests. The victim chose to dress for his execution in a pale suit embroidered with silver and was taken from the Tower in his own landau drawn by six horses "instead of the Mourning-Coach which had been provided by his friends" through the streets of London, which were lined with hundreds of thousands of spectators. Maintaining an elegant composure to the last and giving the customary tribute to his executioners (who squabbled over the five guineas he gave them) Ferrers submitted to the new apparatus which did its job with only limited success. The platform "instantly sunk down from beneath his Feet, and left him entirely suspended; but not having sunk down so low as was designed, it was immediately pressed down, and leveled with the rest of the floor." While it is admitted that Ferrers died only when "eased of all Pain by the Pressure of the Executioner" the account denies that the execution was bungled and specifically refutes reports that "his Lordship stood for some time on tip-toe". The account concludes with the conveyance of Ferrers's body to Surgeon's Hall to be dissected and anatomized according to the relatively recent act (25 Geo. II. C. 37 'An Act for Better Preventing the Horrid Crime of Murder'). .see full details